My lots are in thy hands : : sortilege and its practitioners in late antiquity / / edited by AnneMarie Luijendijk, William E. Klingshirn with the assistance of Lance Jenott.

• Superior document: Religions in the Graeco-Roman World ; Volume 188
• TeilnehmendeR: Luijendijk, AnneMarie,; Klingshirn, William E.,; Jenott, Lance, 1980-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Religions in the Graeco-Roman world ; Volume 188.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (410 pages).

Sortilege—the making of decisions by casting lots—was widely practiced in the Mediterranean world during the period known as late antiquity, between the third and eighth centuries CE. In My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity , AnneMarie Luijendijk and William Klingshirn have collected fourteen essays that examine late antique lot divination, especially but not exclusively through texts preserved in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Employing the overlapping perspectives of religious studies, classics, anthropology, economics, and history, contributors study a variety of topics, including the hermeneutics and operations of divinatory texts, the importance of diviners and their instruments, and the place of faith and doubt in the search for hidden order in a seemingly random world.

Table of Contents

Front Matter -- Copyright page -- -- Preface -- Figures -- Abbreviations -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction -- The Literature of Lot Divination / AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn -- The Instruments of Lot Divination / William E. Klingshirn -- Fateful Spasms: Palmomancy and Late Antique Lot Divination / Salvatore Costanza -- Hermēneiai in Manuscripts of John’s Gospel: an Aid to Bibliomancy / Kevin Wilkinson -- Hermeneutics and Divination: a Unique Syriac Biblical Manuscript as an Oracle of Interpretation / Jeff W. Childers -- Secondhand Homer / Michael Meerson -- Sortes Biblicae Judaicae / Pieter W. van der Horst -- The Sortes Barberinianae within the Tradition of Oracular Texts / Randall Stewart -- Oxyrhynchus and Oracles in Late Antiquity / Alexander Kocar -- Sortes, Scribality, and Syncretism: Ritual Experts and the Great Tradition in Byzantine Egypt / David Frankfurter -- Sortilege between Divine Ordeals and “Secular” Justice: Aspects of Jurisdiction in (Ritual) Texts from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt / Franziska Naether -- Freakonomika: Oracle as Economic Indicator in Roman Egypt / David M. Ratzan -- “I Do Not Wish to Be Rich”: the ‘Barbarian’ Christian Tatian Responds to Sortes / Laura Salah Nasrallah -- “Only Do Not Be of Two Minds”: Doubt in Christian Lot Divination / AnneMarie Luijendijk -- Back Matter -- Bibliography.